"Les,
plug the red cord in… now." Jared Frost said into his headset
from where he sat in his jeep with his laptop sitting atop his knees.
On the screen of his computer, he was being fed live footage from
Leslie Card's sunglasses, fixed with a microscopic camera in the
center of the lens.

Leaned
against the door of the jeep was Michael Ko with a toothpick sitting
gently between his left canine and the tooth beside it. His arms were
crossed through disappointment that he was forbidden by Frost to go
into the Halifax Industries building with the fun part of the
team, but he supposed he saw Frost's point as well; after what
happened last time, they couldn't be taking any chances with him
again.

In the
building, Leslie Card and Morgan Jane were stationed at the southeast
wing, attaching a small package of explosives that would allow them
easy access to the indoor power-plant. There, they would just have to
flip a couple switches and plug a cable into the wall for Jared to be
able to tap into the security. From there, it would just be a few
taps on his keyboard before he would be able to shut out all of
Daniel Halifax's software for a couple months. With no software,
Daniel would have absolutely no dominance over the Time-keeper squad;
meaning that they would have no interferences in their further plans
to take back control of their lives.

Taking
back our lives, Michael snorted, using his tongue to move the
toothpick to the opposite canine, Farfetched idea. Mother would
never allow us to do that. Once she's done repairing the damn
headquarters again, she'll be right back on our asses. Only this
time, I think, she'll finally win.

She
would win, he believed, because Coran was no longer with them to stop
her.

Sitting
against a tree amongst the tundra horizon in the Outbacks of
Australia was Shana Jane, Morgan's little sister. In her fingertips
she fluttered a fresh leaf from the tree branches above her, looking
at it distractedly as her other hand clutched the locket around her
neck. Inside that welded locket there was a single drop of Coran's
blood, pricked from his finger and placed inside before he'd sealed
it and given it to her to show that their hearts would always be
joined…

"He's
not coming back," Shana whispered to herself, allowing one and only
one tear to be shed from each eye simultaneously; bright, sapphire
eyes glistening beneath the sunlight. The wind swept across the
fields of tall, thick, dry grass and the spears gently brushed
against the hairs of her arms, giving her gooseflesh. It had been six
months since he'd left them, and her golden hair had grown to a
point just beneath her shoulder blades since then.

Time had
flown by rather quickly since they watched Coran step out of the jeep
and walk up the steps of what is now his new home in Denver,
Colorado. Since then, very little has happened to the team of
Time-keepers – humans entrusted with the power of science; the
power of time-traveling – and in fact, this was only their second
mission since. Their last one was a failure, though they all had
escaped without being noticed; the red cable Leslie was currently
attaching to the explosive had been a dud and they had no other
choice but to evacuate. That attempt was only a month ago.

Hector
Hatcher's eyes closed gently from where he lay on his back atop the
roof of Jared's jeep. Thoughts of his brief encounter with his
brother, Dante, ran through his head like a never-ending loop of
filmstrip. He didn't know his brother was still alive.

He
didn't even know if that memory of his brother was real.

See,
Jared – the only person in the group that could have possibly seen
Dante – claims that the room had only Hector, the specimens, and
Dr. Reiko when he'd arrived. But no Dante character…

Hector
groaned and rolled onto his side. Who are you, Dante?

After
this thought, Hector opened his eyes to be looking into a fresh pair
of eyes. He cocked his head slightly and saw long shocks of blonde
hair and olive-green eyes and a thin face looking at him with a smirk
below the narrow nose. "You boys want to take a ride with us?"
The man asked loud enough that Michael stirred.

Hector
could see an FBI badge sitting plainly between the man and himself
and his eyes widened with fear. "Cops!" Michael screamed,
spitting his toothpick to the side as he tore open the back door of
the jeep and scrambled in. "Jared, hit the gas! We've got to get
out of here, now!"

Hector
shot to an upright sitting position, but the cop was fast and had a
gun aimed at him before he could make another move. "Get off the
jeep with your hands in the air!" The man demanded behind the
gunpoint of the handgun.

"You
two! Out of your vehicle, now!" A cop behind Hector shouted with a
handgun aimed at Jared in the driver's seat. This cop was tall and
burly with a five-o'clock shadow planted up to his cheekbones. His
hair was short and umber and across his eyes there was a thin-lens
pair of sunglasses to shield today's bright sun on the tundra
plain. Both cops wore black business suits, showing Hector that they
were so much more than just regular street police. They were FBI
agents.

Jared
wasn't moving. He knew how hard Hector had been training for this
particular situation. All he did as he sat there with his laptop in
the seat beside him now was pray with Michael frantically rolling
through a mess of rope to get to the window where the blonde cop's
shirt ended and his pants began. Michael could see the cop's zipper
plainly and he smirked and drew back a clenched fist.

Above,
Hector waited for his cue, sitting frozen at the sight of the gun so
close to him; accurately aimed at his forehead, for sure. "Get off
the car." The agent shouted obnoxiously slowly to Hector, "This
is your last…" He recoiled away from the jeep, dropping his gun.
Hector swung his leg in a long arc along the outer frame of the roof
and kicked the cop's thin, metal badge hard with the toe of his
boot.

The
badge launched at a magnificent speed across the distance between the
vehicle and the bigger agent, notching the area between his
brows as it ricocheted slightly back toward Hector. It all seemed to
have occurred in slow-motion through Hector's eyes, giving him
enough time to shout to Shana, – still by the tree, but
horror-stricken at the turn of events – "We'll be back for you,
I promise."

Shana
nodded and clutched her locket as she watched Hector smile at her
just before he spun over the window frame and slid into the back
seat, just beside Michael. "Go!" He screamed as he rolled up his
window, seeing the blonde cop dive toward them.

(Cut
Scene)

"Ma'am,"
the bigger cop said as he entered the interrogation room at the
station, followed by the blonde cop, "My name is Special Agent
Travis Mendriff. This is my partner, Agent Lance King. We have some
questions for you, if you don't mind us."

"Save
your breath, pig, I'm not going to tell you anything you want to
know." Shana snapped; her arms crossed as she stared blankly at a
pencil sitting nicely on the smooth-top table before her. At the
other end of the table from her, the cops stood motionless for a
moment, looking her over as if analyzing how dangerous she was.

The
blonde, Lance, placed his hand on Mendriff's shoulder and leaned
forward to whisper something. Mendriff didn't seem pleased, but he
nodded and excused himself from the room. Lance closed the door
behind him and turned and smiled to Shana. "You're certainly one
of the prettiest girls we've ever had in this room. I haven't
been on the force long, but I've seen enough crooks to tell that
you're either innocent or really damn good at what you do."

He
pulled out a chair at the opposite end of the table and entwined his
fingers into a ball lying perfectly centered in the table. "Can we
start with a name?"

"Ballsy
Hooper. Good enough?" Shana asked, keeping a straight face as she
locked glances with King. "Can I have a Pepsi or something or do
they not pay this trash dump enough funds to afford a good vending
machine?"

"We'll
worry about the Pepsi later, ma'am." Lance said, keeping his cool
as he was trained to back at the academy. "What were you and your
friends doing out there on Halifax's property?" He asked. She
didn't respond. "Drinking? Using?"

"If we
were drunk or high, believe me, Mr. King, you would have the
whole group in this station at the moment."

"So
why do we have you then? Are you the weakest link?"

Shana
didn't respond.

"Can I
have your name yet, ma'am? For the record?" Lance asked, sliding
a clipboard across the table to where the pencil lie. On the page
there were several lines asking Shana to record her personal
information; name, age, sex, weight, height, etc.

Shana
simply tapped her fingernails briskly on the tabletop and cocked her
head to him, "How about that Pepsi, Mr. King?"

(Cut
Scene)

"That's
right; evacuate. There's no point in finishing this foolish mission
when there's still one more left to do." President Daniel Halifax
of Halifax Industries mumbled to nobody from above a burning
cigarette as he stared at a monstrous monitor on the wall, mapping
the property of Halifax Industries and all the humans walking about
it. About an hour ago, the names of the Time-keeper team appeared on
the screen and two of them progressed directly onto the building
mapping. It was only, only when the names entered the barrier
of his building map that he called up the best of the best in
Sydney's FBI branch.

He
didn't mind the Time-keepers spying on his work, no; it was
the sabotage that bothered him. Spying? Well, spying was all
that Daniel did for a living, thanks to the software he created
originally for Ajax a couple years ago. That was before he broke
their rules and separated to build an industry similar to theirs.

Last
year, Ajax owned eighty-percent of the industrial world. Today, Ajax
owns ten-percent, ever since the Time-keepers took down much of their
headquarters. They set a record for largest decline in the stock
market overnight. Today, Halifax has now what Ajax lost;
eighty-percent. Two years is all it took for Daniel to make it to the
top, and he had all expectations of keeping his throne.

The door
hissed open and there were soft, padded footsteps on the red
carpeting of Daniel's office. Halifax pushed the close
button on his remote to screen the tracking monitor as he turned to
meet the coming visitor. "Well, well, well," Daniel said when he
saw the man in red uniform marching confidently toward him with his
left hand pocketed, "You're a man I haven't seen in a very
long while. Tell me, Leone, how have you been?"

Leone
Fratoire reached up and removed a pair of sunglasses from his eyes to
reveal violet-red corneas between thick eyelashes. His black hair was
out of his face, but not far off and gelled to make sharp points at
the tips. His cheekbones were full, but there wasn't much facial
hair for he wasn't much older than the Time-keepers themselves.
Around his left shoulder there was a twin-barrel sawed-off shotgun,
the barrels crossing the small of his back to a clip sewed into his
red trench-coat.

"What
do you want, Halifax? And make it quick." Leone said with a smooth
yet harsh voice as he stood with one hand pocketed and the other
holding his hip impatiently.

"A
colleague, Sky Pierce, is on the helipad waiting for you as we speak,
Leone. He is going to be your back-up for a little favor I want you
to do for me. We'll call it the first official test for that new
bioweapon we put in you a couple months ago?"

"I'm
not interested." Leone said snidely, turning away from Halifax.

Halifax
lifted his cigarette from its ashtray and flicked it before taking a
drag. "Take another step and I'll unplug you, Leone. Fair
warning."

Leone
stopped in mid-step and glanced behind his shoulder at Halifax and
eventually turned completely around. His eyes narrowed and he sighed,
"What do you want?"

(Cut
Scene)

"What's
with the Pepsi?" Mendriff asked, pulling King away from the
entrance to the interrogation room.

"She
was thirsty. I went to get her a drink. Maybe she'll soften up a
bit, you know?" King said as they observed her through a one-way
mirror. She just sat there, twiddling her thumbs and perhaps singing.

"Can I
get your name now? Please?" Lance King asked from the other end of
the table as Shana cracked open the can of soda and took a long
drink.

Shana
swallowed and looked at the can and then to King and shrugged. "What
does it matter?"

"You
committed a crime. You and I both know that you and your friends were
planning on vandalizing the building, right?"

"So
what? Crimes are committed every minute of every day, and about
ninety-percent of the criminals get away with it. Face it, Agent
King; cops just aren't what they were back in the days of Sinatra
and Monroe." Shana took another drink. "My name is Shana Jane.
That's S-H-A-N-A."

Lance
wrote down her name on the clipboard with the paper and then leaned
back in his chair. "What about your friends? Who are they?"

"You
wouldn't believe me." Shana said.

"Try
me."

"Ok,"
Shana said, also leaning back as she took another sip. "We're
Time-keepers; the whole group. We're not a cult; we're not a
gang; we're a very small group of kids who just so happen to have
the power to travel through time. We don't do it often; we're
afraid of how screwed up the world can get if we keep doing it."

"Screwed
up like how?"

"Let's
just say that mentioning Dornia – that eighth continent, you know?
– would make you the world idiot back in our original time."
Shana said, never looking at the agent as she spoke, but instead
stared at a fly flying around a hanging lamp.

"I
don't believe this." King said, climbing to his feet with a smirk
on his face.

"Give
me the captive Time-keeper," the man in the red trench-coat called
with crossed arms from where he stood in the middle of the court. All
around him there were cops with handguns aimed at him, but he was not
intimidated. "Give me the captive Time-keeper," he tried again,
"or by refusal you shall find yourself bleeding."

Nobody
moved. Cops stood behind overturned tables, behind support beams;
wherever they could to keep most of their bodies out of his sight.
The man uncrossed his arms, placing one hand immediately into his
coat pocket. The other slowly moved down to his hip as he looked them
over. He counted perhaps one-hundred or so and knew that this
certainly would be a good test, as Halifax promised.

He
closed his eyes, ignoring the head officer's next words ("Fire at
will!") as he concentrated on what was inside his body. Soon after
his eyes closed, much movement began inside him; some from the
bullets, some from the creature. When he opened his eyes, a single
tear of blood leaked from the corner of his left eyes as he cast out
his tentacle-like left arm. The tentacle rushed forward, expanding
its mass of excess skin into a tight, needle tip. The tentacle
blasted into and out the back of the lead officer's skull, creating
a sickening crunch as the tentacle swirled around inside the core of
his brain.

And so
it went like this, with Leone Fratoire taking steps into a circular
walking motion as his tentacle – with a mind of its own – tore
bodies in half or severed spines or removed limbs, as a blade would
do. He did not mind the wrongdoings of the creature inside him, for
it was mostly just a more advanced way of doing what he was trained
to do. Back when John Ko was still the leader of Ajax…

Over the
gunfire and shouting, Leone heard the unmistakable voice of his prey;
one of the Time-keepers. "You'll die out there! You've got to
come with me!" Shana shouted, tugging King's jacket sleeve as he
began to leave the interrogation room.

"You're
not going anywhere. Now, the situation is under control. Just sit
still and you'll be safe again in no time." King rationalized,
pulling away.

Shana
gritted her teeth and threw back King's jacket and drew his gun
from its leather holster, aiming it now at his head. "You're
coming with me, Agent King; for your own good. Come on; take me to
the patrol cars."

(Cut
Scene)

Maybe
coming to Barney's Pub on Saint Patrick's Day was a mistake.
Michael thought as he, Hector, Leslie, Morgan, and Jared walked
through the pub toward their usual table. The pub was located five
miles east of Sydney, at a traveler's rest stop area. The rest stop
had a separate road from the interstate that led to a small suburban
town called Oz.

They
took their seats in the corner booth; Michael in the middle of the
semi-circular table, Hector on his right, Morgan – his girlfriend –
on his left, Leslie beside Hector, and Jared beside Leslie. Outside,
in Jared's jeep, the golden Labrador waited for its masters'
returns.

"Well,
long time no see!" Barney Huckle – the pub's owner and
bartender – greeted with a wide smile and open arms as he left his
bar unattended and glided to their table. He was a tall man;
barrel-chested and bearded from ear to ear. But despite his rather
threatening appearance, Michael knew that he was one of the nicest
persons he'd ever met. "Jeez, Michael, what happened to your
face? Looks like you got yourself one nasty set of cat scratches
there!"

(Raven
reached out her hand and gently glided her fingernails across
Michael's cheek and though he was now terrified, he did not flinch.
"Oh Michael," she said, "it's so good to have you home
again."

She
drew back her hand and slapped it across his tanned cheek, her
fingernails cutting four deep gashes into his thin skin. Michael
screamed "Leslie! Run!" as he fell to the floor, clutching his
face.)

"It's
nothing, Barney; really." Michael said, gently pressing his right
hand against his scars as he turned his head subtly to avoid any
other notices amongst the pub. "Happy Saint Patty's Day, by the
way. Things are pretty busy tonight, I can see. That's good." He
said, changing subjects as he looked around the pub.

The bar
wasn't very large at all – consisting of maybe thirty tables,
each fit for six people – and every chair in the room, it seemed,
was filled by a person. Above them, speakers played music of Irish
tradition. Even though half the people in the room were too drunk to
speak full sentences, it was still rather comforting to the team of
Time-keepers.

"Yes,
yes, business is nice here tonight, indeed. And Happy Saint Patty's
Day to ye kids, too." Barney looked at the group and cocked his
head, "Kind of short on the party tonight, ain't ye?"

Michael
noticed Hector tense up to his right, but he kept his cool. "Coran
is home with his mother in America…"

"What
about your sister, Morgan? Is she alright?" Barney asked sincerely,
leaning forward with his massive hands placed on the edge of the
table.

"We
had a bit of a situation outside. We're here to celebrate, Barney,
but we may also need to use The Room for a few minutes to plan out
her escape, if you don't mind." Leslie said before anyone else
could reply.

"Well,"
Barney said, digging around a bit for a key that he passed to Leslie,
"I hope it's nothing too serious. But sure, you can certainly use
The Room. Take whatever you need; anything for you, darling. How
about the rest of ye? Michael, Morgan, and Leslie are eighteen now, I
suppose. Feel up for a drink to celebrate? It's on the house."

"I'll
have an orange juice," Hector said after a moment.

Jared
added, "Make that two, please." Soon after, the rest of the group
had also made their requests for orange juice, because they had all
read Steven Young's journals, and knew why not to allow alcohol
into their system before time-traveling…

Barney
wrote out the tab and excused himself and the Time-keepers looked to
Leslie, who was dangling the key to The Room on the index finger of
her right hand.

(Cut
Scene)

"It's
this car, let's go." Lance said as he and Shana ran down an iron
staircase into the garage behind the FBI headquarters. At this point,
Shana had dropped her aim at his head, knowing that he wanted to
leave too, but she still kept it in her hand as they ran just in
case. The car was a long, black Camaro with recently replaced tires,
so it was bound to get them far away from the building, fast.

"What
do you think you two are doing?" Called a strong voice from behind
the gunpoint of an FBI standard 9mm. handgun. It was Special Agent
Travis Mendriff, standing at the top of the iron stairwell.

"Agent
Mendriff," Shana cried boldly, "That man in there is Leone
Fratoire; he's dead, but was brought back an unstoppable creature –
a bioweapon! You have to come with us or he'll kill you too!"

"He's
after the girl, Mendriff," Lance said, pulling Shana behind him to
keep her out of gunpoint. "It is our duty to keep her safe;
criminal or not. Come with us or stay here, I don't care, but we've
got to leave now one way or the other."

After a
moment, Mendriff lowered his gun and ran down the staircase. "I'm
driving."

(Cut
Scene)

"Gentlemen,
I feel my time here has come up short, and I must leave." Leone
called out to the policemen whose heads had caved from his tentacle.
He saw one living cop amongst the sea of dead, and there were
possibly more in hiding. The living cop was shaking with fright,
shooting air from his empty gun; his fingers and face a bloody mess,
though it wasn't his blood.

"Do
not fear me, sir," Leone called, musing himself as he walked toward
the man. To his side, the tentacle of his removed left arm was
whipping itself clean of blood as it retracted into his body. He
reached into the inside pocket of his red jacket with his good arm
and he removed a small pendant the size of a quarter and reached out
to the cop. "Take it. It's a gift so that you do not forget me."

The cop
continued to pull the trigger, his gun clicking after each pull, and
Leone soon became impatient and slid it into the breast pocket of the
cop's uniform. "Thanks for being such a good sport."

He
turned on his heel and walked toward the exit not twenty feet away,
minding his feet from all the rubble and pools of blood on the nice
tile floor. He pushed open what was left of the glass double-doors
and walked slowly down the long staircase toward his parked
motorcycle.

To his
right, the sound of a diesel engine lit up the silence as a black
Camaro tore out of the underground garage's ramp toward the
highway. Leone lifted his eyebrows at this unexpected event, but did
not rush his steps. He simply mounted his motorcycle and started the
engine before looking at his pocket watch. Inside there was a slide
where a pendant could sit, but he'd just given it away to the
surviving cop. He smiled and pushed the button as he drove onto the
highway, after the Camaro. Behind him, the headquarters erupted in
loud noise as it exploded from detonation of the tiny pendant.

The author would like to thank you for your continued support. Your review has been posted.